Speak to the Earth (2 page)

“Yeah,” Bryan admitted, “the one I failed. Let’s get to work on two and three, if you can tear yourself away from those corn chips.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Iris warned as she walked down the hall to the kitchen.

Bryan hated it when his mother was right. Now, here on the exam paper, was the question he and Elias had confidently decided not to prepare. In
a two-page essay
,
campare the importance of
the
forestry industry to the fishery with respect to th
e
economy of British Columbia
. He caught sight of Elias, two rows over, giving Bryan his famous I-told-you-so look. Bryan shrugged and rolled his eyes. Elias pantomimed a strangulation.

Fish, rocks and trees. That’s B.C., Bryan mused, at least here on Vancouver Island. Thank goodness I don’t have to write about mining. Trees and fish. Okay, trees and fish.

He looked out the window, which was, as usual, being hosed down by spring rain, then at Mrs Richmond, whom Bryan wished he could have hosed down with sulphuric acid until she dissolved into a thin column of smoke and a pile of empty clothing, like the Wicked Witch of the West. She sat unperturbed behind her desk, scanning the room for cheaters.

Staring at the empty foolscap where his answer should have been forming itself by now, Bryan clicked his ballpoint a couple of times. He inked in the o in “forestry” and the
e
in “fishery.” No profound thoughts came to mind. He sighed and began to write in large round letters.

British Columbia is a beautiful province and since my mother and I moved here about five years
ago,
it has been my home. We are lucky to live in such a beautiful place
.

He paused and looked at the ceiling for inspiration, then balled up the paper, earning a scowl from Mrs Richmond for shattering the scholarly silence of the room. It’s a good name for you, you old bat, he thought.
W-cubed. The Wicked Witch of the West.

All around him kids scribbled industriously.
Question Number One
, he printed on the top of a new sheet of foolscap — a pretty redundant move, since the exam had only one question. Leaving two empty lines, he began in the same oversized writing.
Some say the forestry is the most important industry in British Columbia. It’s true that trees are really really important to the people and the economy of our beautiful province
He paused and looked out at the rain again.
After all, where would we be without them?
Reading over this brilliant introduction, he added,
The trees
,
that is, not the people. Although people are certainly really really important too
. With a half-line indentation he began a new paragraph.

Others, however, hold the opinion that the fishery is the main industry, because we have so many fish here, all over the place, and so many kinds. Like salmon and mackerel, to name only two. Of many. There is absolutely no question, that the fishery is really really crucial to the economy of our wonderful province of British Columbia, Canada. After all, where would we be without all those really really nice fish?

Bryan had now completed slightly more than half a page of monster writing. He clicked his pen some more.
The question is, who is right? The forestry people or the fishery people? I’ll
be damned if I know, he thought, wondering how he was going to fill two whole pages.

No amount of fertilizer shovelled onto the page would induce W-cubed to cough up marks unless there were a few facts mixed in. Richmond was a “counter”:
she hunted for facts she had taught the class and, when she ran into one, flagged it with a red check mark. Bryan searched his limited memory for anything Iris or Jimmy might have said that W-cubed might consider worthy of a red mark.

His uncle had laboured all his life as a logger, wherever he could find work. In Oregon, the interior of B.C. and here on the island he had felled trees. Iris’s knowledge about resource industries was less direct: nevertheless, she clung tenaciously to many opinions about fishing and logging — often much to her brother’s annoyance. She complained regularly that the fishery would eventually die out, just as the cod stocks had on the East Coast. “And they’ve polluted the ocean so badly that the fish will all be poisoned to death if we — or the Japanese trawlers — don’t net them first. With Vancouver dumping minimally treated sewage into the gulf, it’s a wonder the bloody salmon can make it to the Fraser, let alone up the Fraser. They had to shut down the shellfish industry last year because the stuff isn’t fit to eat. And the forests,” she railed, “don’t even talk to me about the clear-cuts.”

“I won’t, don’t worry,” Jimmy had put in. “I’d hate to slow down your tirade with a bunch of facts.”

Undeterred, Iris had finished up with a monologue about the depleted ozone layer.

But Bryan couldn’t remember anything from his mother’s rants or his uncle’s arguments that would help him now. He fixed his eyes on the source of his pains. To
Bryan she resembled a bespectacled stick wrapped in brown tweed. He wondered how on earth she had ever become a Mrs. Then, inspiration struck He remembered that Mr Richmond was a local manager for
MFI
— Mackenzie Forest Industries.

Quickly, in almost normal-sized writing, he scribbled,
In the economy of British Columbia, the forest industry
is our
best friend…
.

Bryan could not remember when his biological alarm clock had jangled his hormones awake and sent them singing through his blood. As he stumbled through puberty they crooned secret messages, then shrieked abrupt and startling commands, and finally staged a full-scale demented opera in his body that often left him exhausted and confused.

The Health classes at school, with their clinical talk about gonads, body hair and breasts, offered explanations but little understanding or comfort. All Bryan knew for sure was that somewhere between grade five and now, girls had miraculously transformed themselves from boring, noisy and essentially stupid creatures to graceful and alluring beings whose clothing fit them a lot better than it used to. And since her arrival at Talbot Inlet Junior High last September, the female who most commanded his attention was Ellen Thomson.

She was in his class, and sat three rows over and two ahead. When she raised her hand, her shirt would stretch tightly across her breasts. Her thick red hair, usually
worn in a French braid, swayed softly across her back when she moved her head, or fell forward when she bent over her work.

“You stare at her butt much harder and you’ll burn a hole through her jeans,” Elias had once said as they lined up in the cafeteria for french fries.

“Shut up, Elias. I wasn’t staring.”

“As if. Not that I blame you. She’s got one of the nicest rear ends in this pitiful excuse for a school.”

“She’s not just a body, you know.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Elias had, as he so often did, struck Bryan in a sensitive spot. When his hormones wailed at him he felt guilty thinking about Ellen that way. He knew he should be drawn to her personality, her mind, her accomplishments — she was an A-student and a star athlete — but how could he be attracted to her character when she was a stranger? He knew more about her green eyes, the curve of her brows and the spray of freckles across her nose than he did about her nature.

That day, after lunch, he confided his guilt to Elias, whose response was typical.

“Relax, Bry, you’re normal. Besides, let’s be honest. How many times does a guy look at a passing skirt and say, ‘Hey! Nice personality!’ or ‘Check out the mind on that one!’ ”

“Thanks a lot, Elias. You’re a big help.”

Bryan envied his best friend, and sometimes he felt guilty about that, too. Elias could talk the talk, make the
girls laugh, ask them out on dates. With his dark skin, jet-black hair and wide shoulders, he was a natural. He could make up funny songs and sing them under his breath in class, setting up ripples of laughter that circled around him and splashed across the room.

I, Bryan thought, am the opposite. Not short but not tall. Not ugly but not cute either — the stiff wavy ginger hair and pug nose I inherited from my dad guarantee that.

On the few occasions when he had tried to converse with a female of his own age, he’d rehearsed what he was going to say. Inside his head the words sounded pretty good. But when they came out of his mouth — garble. He felt like the only guy in the world who could trip over his own tongue.

The day of the disastrous test, Elias and Bryan were splashing across the school yard to board the school bus that took them home to Nootka Harbour, nine miles down the peninsula. The rain had let up, and the kids on the bus were even more boisterous than usual. As the two boys made their way back to the back of the bus, Elias stopped Bryan.

“Look,” he said above the confusion of voices around them, pointing to an empty seat beside Ellen.

“No way,” Bryan said.

“Okay, if you’re too chicken.”

As they passed Ellen Bryan found himself shoved into the seat beside her, his escape blocked by Elias’s broad back as he began talking to a tall gawky girl named
Shirley. Bryan rose and shoved Elias, who stood as immovable as a Douglas fir. At that moment the bus lurched forward with an audible grinding of gears, knocking Bryan onto his rear again. He stared at the metal back of the seat in front of him. He gulped, aware that his heart had sped up alarmingly and that a hot flush crept up his neck and into his face.

“How did you do on the big test?”

“Uh, are you talking to me?”

Ellen smiled and tossed back her hair. “See anybody else in this seat?”

Bryan forced himself to face her. She was wearing tight blue jeans and an oversized red leather vest over a white T-shirt. He gulped again.

“Oh, uh, yeah, I guess you’re right.” What a smooth talker you are, Bryan, he thought to himself. By now she probably thinks you’re retarded.

“So?”

“Uh … so …?”

“The test. Do okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, no. Not really. I’m pretty sure I, you know, failed it.” He found himself scratching his ear and quickly pulled his hand away. “How about you?”

“I did okay, I think. I studied a lot. I like school.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“No, you don’t You never take any books home and you flunked the last project.”

Thanks to W-cubed, everyone in class had been treated to the spectacle of Bryan slinking to her desk and
receiving his essay. Richmond had handled it as if it were a dead fish.

“Well, that’s true. But I’m going to work hard now. I really am. I learned my lesson.”

Ellen laughed. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I’m Ellen Thomson, by the way.”

“I know. Hi. I’m Bryan Troupe.”

“I know. I sort of know your mother.”

“My mom? From where, the supermarket?” Bryan hoped not. Iris worked at the grocery store as a cashier. Ellen’s parents were well off — her father was some kind of supervisor in
MFI
and her mother was a lawyer.

“No, I saw her at the school meeting a while ago. She made a pretty passionate speech.”

“Really?” Bryan said, groaning inwardly. Bracing himself to make a quick exit, he looked to the aisle, but Elias was still there, his torso swaying with the movement of the bus.

“I was impressed,” Ellen added.

Bryan expected but did not find a note of sarcasm in her voice. Forget this girl, he thought, suddenly angry at his mother, and not for the first time. A few months before, a small group of parents, led by the Thomsons, had tried to get a book banned from the school library because it was “sacrilegious.” Something about witches or ghosts. Iris had gone to the meeting — probably in her grungy old pink track suit, Bryan thought.

“My parents made me go,” Ellen told him. “One of the parents stood up and said the book didn’t belong in
a decent Christian community, especially a school, where it could corrupt young minds. Your mom told the group she was a Christian, too, and if their idea of Christianity was to ban harmless books just because their narrow little minds were offended, then they were way out of line. That’s not democracy, she said.”

“Mom can get pretty wound up about that stuff,” Bryan said lamely. “Sometimes she gets out of line herself.”

“Well, maybe.”

Bryan sweated and racked his brains for a clever way to change the subject. He gave up. Ellen looked out the window. Well, that’s it, Bryan, he thought, you blew your chance. Not that you ever really had one.

“Excuse me,” Ellen said as the bus pulled up at the end of her lane. The big house she lived in was barely visible through the spruce trees that lined the road.

“Oh, uh, sorry.” Bryan was relieved that she was leaving. The pressure was killing him. He stood in the aisle to let her pass.

“Anyway,” she said, gathering up her books, “if you’re serious about what you said, maybe we could study together some time.” And with that she went down the aisle and out the door.

Bryan stood there with his mouth open, wondering if his ears were working properly, until the bus ground forward again.

Elias slid in beside him. “So, how’d it go?”

“It didn’t,” Bryan answered, still not believing his ears.

“Hey, Bry, you got to get moving, man. I can’t do everything for you.”

B
ryan was setting the kitchen table for dinner when his mother and uncle came in, laden with bags of groceries.

“Hey, Bry,” Jimmy called out as he put down his bags.

“Hey, Jimmy. What’s for supper, Mom? I’m starved.”

“Dead rats and rotten salmon roe,” Jimmy cut in, lighting up a cigarette with a big chrome-plated Zippo lighter.

“The guest rooms need to be made up, dear,” Iris told Bryan. “We got some customers coming on the weekend.”

It must be March, Bryan mused. The whale-watchers are back in town.

Soon after they moved to Nootka Harbour, Bryan’s mother had put some of Norm’s life insurance money together with the few dollars she had salvaged by selling the business in Drumheller and bought a bungalow on the rocky shore of Osprey Cove, on the west side of
town. Her job at the grocery store didn’t pay much and there didn’t seem to be an abundance of career opportunities in Nootka Harbour for a grade ten dropout, so she decided to dip once again into what she still thought of as Norm’s kitty and start up a business. That was when Bryan’s home became Norm’s Bed ’n Breakfast.